Sweden will hold its European Parliament election on 9 June. Linda Berg and Jonathan Polk examine the key campaign issues and assess what the polling can tell us about the likely outcome.

This article is part of a series on the 2024 European Parliament elections. The EUROPP blog will also be co-hosting a panel discussion on the elections at LSE on 6 June.

Fresh from hosting this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in which the EU flag was banned from the final competition by the European Broadcasting Union because of the “sensitive global political context”, Swedes head to the ballot box for the 2024 European Parliament election.

A central question remains, just how politicised is the EU in Sweden today? As we show, there is evidence that European Parliament elections in Sweden continue to involve domestic politics to some extent. But there are other ways in which more European contestation emerges around the parties and voters at the poles of the transnational cleavage in European politics.

Projected results

According to the public opinion polls up to this point (see Figure 1 below), the small parties, particularly the Christian Democrats (KD) and the Liberals (L), are at risk of failing to clear the four per cent threshold needed to retain the seats they each currently have in the European Parliament.

As of 28 May, the Centre Party (C) are on pace to drop from two seats to one. And although the Green Party (MP) is set to double its vote share from the 2022 national parliamentary election, the party could move from three seats in the last European Parliament to two. The workhorse model of European Parliament elections expects electoral gains for small parties at the European level relative to national elections, but the smaller parties of Sweden appear likely to go against that trend this year.

Yet national second-order election theory also expects parties in opposition domestically to perform well relative to governing parties, and the first place in the polling for the Social Democrats (S), the main opposition party, fits this pattern. Indeed, the party is now polling ahead of its best result in any European Parliament election. However, the Social Democrats have consistently been the largest Swedish party in the European Parliament, regardless of government party status, and support for the Moderates (M), the lead party in Sweden’s right-wing government, is not dramatically different from their vote share in the last national parliamentary election.

Figure: Polling for the 2024 European Parliament election in Sweden

Source: Swedish National Election Studies, University of Gothenburg. Note: Data from Ipsos (22 May), Demoskop (23 May) and Indikator (28 May), weighted by sample sizes. The calculation of which parties and candidates will win the 21 Swedish seats has been made using the Modified Sainte-Laguë method and with 1.2 as the divisor. Places 22-25 on the list show which candidates would have won seats if Sweden had more than 21 seats in the European Parliament. The results are based on the assumption that open list votes do not change the order of the parties’ candidates.

While Sweden seems likely to deliver mixed evidence for theories of European Parliament electoral behaviour, one area where the country has caught up with (and in some cases passed) its neighbours in western Europe is the mainstreaming of far-right parties. The Sweden Democrats (SD), at this point the only anti-EU party in Sweden (though no longer pro-Swexit), is polling above its 2019 European Parliament election vote total and would gain two additional seats, which would make it the second largest Swedish party in the upcoming European Parliament.

Although the SD is only a support party in the government composed of M, L and KD, the party’s vote share in the 2022 parliamentary election and polling ahead of the 2024 European Parliament election make it the largest party of the right bloc, providing it with considerable influence in Swedish politics. In this, Sweden reflects the more general European right-wing turn and success for far-right parties. Yet, unlike many other anti-EU parties, the SD has traditionally underperformed at European Parliament elections compared to its showing in domestic elections, so it remains to be seen if the party will be more successful this year.

Campaign issues

The dominant story in Swedish media over the last few weeks has not been the European Parliament elections themselves, but rather a Swedish TV4 report about the SD’s communications department using multiple anonymous social media accounts to spread anti-immigrant material and attack political rivals, as well as parties and politicians in the government that the SD supports.

In his response, SD party leader Jimmy Åkesson asserted that the story was part of a domestic influence operation by the left-liberal establishment to mobilise their voters and undermine the SD ahead of the European Parliament election. Figure 1 above contains very recent polling data (22, 23 and 28 May), and so far, there does not seem to be any decline in SD support.

But the voters of smaller governing parties are dissatisfied, particularly the Liberals, which might negatively affect the vote for these parties, already on the edge of the electoral threshold. What is more, the Liberals also face the difficult situation of having signed a pledge not to collaborate with far-right parties as part of the Renew European Parliament group while participating in a right-wing government dependent on support from the SD.

The most important issue for voters seems to be the environment (continuing a trend from previous European Parliament elections), with defence following closely. All parties mention the environment in their platforms, albeit with substantial variation in emphasis, the types of solutions proposed, or even whether they downplay the importance of action (SD). The election posters and main messages frequently focus on borders/boundaries this year, from keeping the boundaries between Sweden and Russia, to borrowing Trump-style messaging such as “my Europe builds walls” (SD).

Turnout

As for turnout, Sweden has seen an increase in turnout for three European Parliament elections in a row, reaching 55 per cent in the last election. For 2024, some factors support a higher turnout: strong support for EU membership, insecurities in Sweden’s neighbourhood, and – marginally – more well-known candidates (compared to 2019).

Moreover, recent scholarship indicates that LGBTQ voters in Sweden could be particularly motivated to turnout for this European Parliament election. This argument turns on LGBTQ mobilisation against the far right in defence of LGBTQ political gains, and relates to increased scholarly attention to affective polarisation in Sweden amongst the public, political elites and legislative speech, with a focus on the SD and to some extent the green-left. While the division of society into rival blocs of in- and out-groups has many negative normative implications, research suggests that it can boost turnout.

However, the timing of this year’s European Parliament election in the middle of the national election cycle, the somewhat worse economic situation compared to 2019, and the fact it will take place in June (over a long holiday weekend) rather than May, are all factors that could reduce turnout. On this last point, however, Sweden’s early voting system provides ample opportunity to cast ballots early, with voting running from 22 May – 9 June. Early voting has increased for each election, and the early days of voting this year show an increase compared to the 2019 European Parliament election.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Michael Hoeck / Shutterstock.com